Mangaluru: The Mangaluru City Corporation, which has tried all possible ways to solve waste disposal issues, on Friday, August 26 organised a workshop on e-waste management.
As first step towards e-waste disposal, the MCC proposes to have kiosk bins in MCC office premises, City Centre mall and Corporation office premises in Surathkal.
The workshop was inaugurated by District in-charge Minister B Ramanath Rai, who personally dropped in some bits of e-waste into the bins.
This is an initiative taken to enforce the rules as per the notification of Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Government of India dated March 23, 2016.
Rai said that awareness must be created globally since e-waste is becoming a problem at the global-level. He also suggested that recycling of e-waste is something that must be given a serious thought.
Environment Officer, Karnataka State Pollution Control Board Environment Officer Rajashekar Puranik said that large quantity of e-waste is produce with advancement in technology and means to dispose them off is need of the hour.
“Disposing e-waste haphazardly can be very dangerous because most of these wastes contain in them lead, cadmium, mercury, polychlorinated biphenyls (known as PCBs) etched chemicals, brominated flame retardants (BFR) arsenic asbestos and nickel and others. This also has precious and semi precious materials like Silver, gold, platinum, palladium and plastics, iron, glass, aluminum and copper,” he said adding if the e-waste is stored after their use is over, it is harmless, but problem arises when people driven by greed try to break these e-wastes with the aim of extracting the precious and semi-precious materials from them.
Chief Whip Ivan D’Souza lauding efforts of Ramanath Rai as Forest and Ecology Minister said that after Rai became the Forest minister, he has shown special interest in maintaining ecology and environment to tackle climate change.
D’Souza said that DK district stands seventh in the country as far as e-waste management is concerned and now the target of the district must be to clinch first position.
MLA Moideen Bava. Mayor Harinath among others were present.
